Stress had been constructing at Princeton College as pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied a white-columned, Greek Revival-style constructing on the heart of campus and the police moved in. An indignant crowd had surrounded a bus the place two demonstrators had been being held after officers led them out of the constructing.

“It was a tense time as there have been lots of of protesters that had been making an attempt to intervene with lawful arrests,” reads a police report from that day, April 29, 2024.

David Piegaro, then a Princeton junior, was there filming together with his cellphone. Mr. Piegaro says he was not one of many protesters, and he opposes a lot of their language and ways. He described himself as a pro-Israel “citizen journalist” who was involved by what he noticed because the college’s inadequate response and wished to bear witness by recording.

By dusk, he was one in all greater than a dozen college students charged with wrongdoing on the elite New Jersey faculty. He joined the roughly 3,100 people arrested or detained final spring on campuses throughout the nation amid a wave of scholar activism over the battle in Gaza.

Trespassing expenses are pending in opposition to the pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Princeton that day. However Mr. Piegaro, who was charged with assaulting a police officer after he was blocked from coming into a campus constructing, was the primary particular person to go to trial. On Tuesday, the Princeton Municipal Courtroom decide who presided over Mr. Piegaro’s two-day trial in February discovered him not responsible.

“By the way colliding with an outstretched arm might have been unwise, and even defiant, however it doesn’t quantity to reckless disregard,” the decide, John F. McCarthy III, stated as he introduced the decision.

“The defendant, in my view, confirmed poor judgment in a tense second, however it doesn’t rise to the extent of prison recklessness.”

The Trump administration has made a dramatic show of punishing or trying to punish college-age protesters who’ve spoken out in opposition to Israel’s army response in Gaza, the place the dying toll has surpassed 50,000 people.

The administration has both detained or threatened to deport a minimum of 9 worldwide college students or college members, together with a Tufts University graduate student who had co-written an opinion piece within the scholar newspaper criticizing the college’s response to pro-Palestinian calls for. She was taken into custody final week.

However the arrest and trial of Mr. Piegaro, who was born and raised in New Jersey, underscored the complexity of the problems going through college directors and the police as they attempt to stability respect without spending a dime expression with questions on what constitutes hate speech.

Mr. Piegaro, 27, is older than most undergraduate college students. He started finding out at Princeton after serving for a number of years within the U.S. Military, the place he labored as an intelligence analyst with a top-secret safety clearance.

He’s Jewish and stated he was troubled by the lethal assault on Israel by the phobia group Hamas, which killed about 1,200 individuals, and the ways of the rising pro-Palestinian motion on campus.

He stated he was not, nonetheless, concerned within the protests or counterprotests. And one of many expenses introduced in opposition to him — aggravated assault — was much more critical than the trespassing citations filed in opposition to 13 different Princeton college students charged that day.

As Mr. Piegaro’s case moved by way of the prison justice system, three of the fees he initially confronted, together with aggravated assault, had been dropped or diminished. He and his lawyer, Gerald Krovatin, stated he twice refused presents to plead responsible to a lesser cost, satisfied of his innocence and unwilling to voluntarily mar his document with a conviction of any sort.

He went to trial on a lower-level assault cost, equal to a misdemeanor, that carried a possible penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 high-quality.

“I actually consider I’m the sufferer,” Mr. Piegaro stated in an interview. “I actually don’t assume I did something.”

The run-in that led to his arrest concerned the top of the college’s campus safety division, Kenneth Strother Jr.

Mr. Piegaro, upset that greater than a dozen of the protesters had been launched with citations, had begun recording two of their college advisers, who had been talking with Mr. Strother and strolling towards Whig Corridor, which is adjoining to the constructing that had been occupied, Clio Corridor.

Mr. Strother barred Mr. Piegaro from making an attempt to observe them in, and Mr. Piegaro might be heard on the video he recorded asking Mr. Strother, who was not in uniform or carrying a badge, his identify and place.

“Don’t contact me,” Mr. Piegaro says earlier than the video abruptly ends. Seconds later, Mr. Piegaro stated, he discovered himself tumbling down the entrance steps of the constructing.

What occurred in between was the crux of the dispute.

In response to Mr. Strother, whose account appeared within the police report, Mr. Piegaro “pushed himself” into Mr. Strother, who “grabbed Mr. Piegaro by his arm and instructed him he was underneath arrest.” Mr. Strother stated that he misplaced maintain of Mr. Piegaro, who was resisting arrest, inflicting Mr. Piegaro to fall down the steps.

Mr. Piegaro says he was the one who was assaulted.

Sarah Kwartler, a graduate scholar who had gone on two dates with Mr. Piegaro a number of years in the past and acknowledged him, testified that she stopped to observe a part of what unfolded.

She stated she noticed Mr. Strother holding Mr. Piegaro “like an open pair of scissors,” shedding his grip and dropping him, in accordance with a abstract of the testimony submitted to the decide. Mr. Piegaro then rolled to the underside of the steps, Ms. Kwartler stated, the place he was handcuffed and arrested.

Complaining of soreness, Mr. Piegaro was taken to a hospital and evaluated for damaged ribs and a concussion. Mr. Strother, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, was unhurt, in accordance with the police report.

Mr. Krovatin, Mr. Piegaro’s lawyer, had argued that the choice to initially cost his consumer with aggravated assault, along with a number of different crimes, smacked of disparate therapy when put next with the lower-level trespassing expenses leveled in opposition to the protesters.

“The very fact stays that the one scholar charged with three indictable offenses on that day was a Jewish U.S. Military veteran,” Mr. Krovatin stated, including, “I don’t get why Princeton hasn’t pulled again on this.”

A spokeswoman for Princeton, Jennifer Morrill, stated earlier than the decision that the college deferred to the judgment of the municipal prosecutor and the municipal decide. She drew a distinction between Mr. Piegaro’s assault case and the trespassing expenses filed in opposition to the protesters.

With regard to the trespassing expenses, she stated, “The college is just not a celebration to — and has not intervened in — these court docket proceedings, although the college has constantly stated that it helps an final result that may reduce the affect of the arrest on these people.”

She added, “The college has no touch upon the separate expenses filed in opposition to a person in connection together with his interplay with a police officer.”

Two of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested at Princeton final April declined to remark. Princeton’s municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, didn’t return calls or emails.

After Mr. Piegaro was arrested, he was barred from scholar housing and prevented from coming into campus for about two weeks. He spent a couple of days dwelling with Rabbi Eitan Webb, a Jewish chaplain and director of Princeton College’s Chabad Home.

Rabbi Webb, in an interview, recalled a “pressure-cooker impact” on campus final spring.

“In that setting, talking particularly to the occasions of that day, when you’ve an entire host of public security officers, directors — I feel doing their greatest — it’s not stunning that errors would get made,” Rabbi Webb, who attended Mr. Piegaro’s trial, stated earlier than the decision was introduced.

The trial featured competing accounts of the confrontation, and Mr. Piegaro stated merely that he was “relieved” by Tuesday’s verdict.

Not like many universities, Princeton rapidly quashed efforts final April by pro-Palestinian demonstrators to erect tents on campus. Not less than two individuals had been charged after they refused to take down tents. The takeover of Clio Corridor on the night time Mr. Piegaro was arrested lasted solely about two hours after college students got a deadline to exit and instructed that they’d face arrest.

The college has additionally managed to keep away from a lot of the turmoil that has engulfed the presidents of a number of different outstanding universities, together with some who had been summoned to testify earlier than Congress about their faculties’ responses to antisemitism on campus.

On Tuesday, nonetheless, the Trump administration paused an undisclosed portion of the college’s federal funding. Different prime faculties, together with Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, have confronted related cuts because of perceived failures recognized by the administration.

“We’re dedicated to preventing antisemitism and all types of discrimination,” Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, wrote in an e mail notifying the college neighborhood that “a number of dozen” federal grants had been suspended. “And we’ll cooperate with the federal government in combating antisemitism.”

“Princeton,” he added, “will even vigorously defend educational freedom and the due course of rights of this college.”

Final month, after Columbia agreed to concessions in an effort to protect $400 million in funding, Mr. Eisgruber stated that he was involved that utilizing federal analysis grants as a cudgel might trigger long-term hurt to academic freedom.

“I feel when you make concessions as soon as, it’s exhausting to not make them once more,” he instructed “PBS NewsHour.”

A day earlier than the funding cuts turned public, Ms. Morrill reiterated that Princeton’s “expansive dedication to free speech — which incorporates peaceable dissent, protest and demonstrations — stays unwavering,” whereas noting the college’s guidelines governing the time, place and manner of such demonstrations.

The campus continues to bustle this week with indicators of vigorous educational debate.

On Wednesday afternoon, Princeton is holding a discussion board on educational freedom and “whether or not, when, and the way universities ought to take institutional stances on social and political points.” Later this week, a convention is ready to happen on the historical past, concept and politics of the “anti-Zionist concept.”

Keith A. Whittington, a longtime Princeton professor who’s instructing this 12 months at Yale Legislation College, is one in all three lecturers collaborating in Wednesday’s discussion board. Professor Whittington, a free speech scholar, was on Princeton’s campus the day the pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied Clio Corridor however didn’t witness Mr. Piegaro’s arrest.

“It simply type of signifies how fraught issues are on campuses, and the way risky these conditions are,” Professor Whittington stated.

Within the second, he stated, information might be tough to parse.

“That’s why you’ve trials,” he stated.

Mr. Piegaro expects to graduate in Might and is hopeful the decision will assist ease the strain he has felt over the past 11 months. Along with a level in economics, there’s one different factor he nonetheless hopes to get from Princeton.

“I need an apology, actually,” he stated.